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Wolin 2:  How Might We Get-On with Politics—-But Who are the ‘We’?  [7/31/11]

 

Friends:

While the national political scene might make us gag now and then, I assume all of ‘us’—the ‘we’ who might chance upon reading this blog and exploring this web site—will get-on somehow. That somehow, however, might be exceedingly various and perhaps threatening. Some of us might vomit, or we might cuss, or we might watch another movie or play another CD, or have another sip of inebriating spirits, or unpack and brandish our firearms, or some might suffer great deprivations, or, perhaps, a few might pray that something approaching sanity and justice could take the we of the nation by storm and render it governable, or almost governable.

I confess that I am seized with regular bouts of sadness, occasioned by a yearning for hopefulness when the justification for hopefulness seems dim and elusive. I am sad too because I fear the political train-wreck has, in a sense, already happened, already become the fate—the moira—of the nation. A deeply divided people cannot even share a narrative of what is happening and why. History itself has been hi-jacked by principalities and powers. Governing has been rendered ridiculously comic but verging on the…


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Wolin 1: The Posting of the Notes on Sheldon Wolin [7/15/11]

Friends:

Some notes about the provenance of the posting of the Notes on Sheldon Wolin.

Like so many of you, I bleed incessantly about the disarray of the church in America and about the church’s or churches utter incoherence concerning the state of American politics. My bleeding is not a recent disease—but it began to hemorrhage dangerously in recent years. In order to diminish the hemorrhaging, in the fall of 2007, I invited a group of pastors, active and retired, and some really earnest and well-read laypersons to gather monthly and read texts together pertaining to ‘church and politics.’ Hence, I was able not only to have companionship as I bled, but some staunching of the hemorrhaging began to occur.

Over the next three years this stalwart group read many engaging texts, and among them was the book by Wolin on which my recently posted notes focused. It may also be of interest to friends earnest about matters of church and politics, to see the list of the texts we did read, starting with the order of reading itself. Perhaps some of you might find these texts useful or informative or provocative or…


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More Notes on Grammar: The Person of Jesus Christ [5/8/11]

Friends: 

I am continuing to post Orienting Notes on the Grammar. The latest entry is on Ch. 7: The Person of Jesus. The following is an excerpt from the Ch. 7 notes, which I hope invites you to go the notes  for further reading.

 

  1. Orientation to Christology  [365-70]

“We have been doing christology all along in this confessional theology. I refused to think of God first in some vaguely monotheistic sense. I refused to posit a ‘god’ whom everyone already clearly knows, or who can be identified and known in some general and/or ‘rational’ and/or universal way. If I had undertaken any of those moves, then I would have had to ask how this ‘god’ could relate to or be present in or become Jesus Christ. Rather, I started with the primary confession that Jesus of Nazareth is the definitive self-communicating presence of God. I argued that ‘who God is’ is crucially defined, clarified, and enriched by the Jesus-event. And it is because of Jesus as God’s self-revelation that Christians also claim that this is the same God as the God of Israel who self-identified to Israel as…


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Human Being: Creature, Person, Spirit, and Sinner [3/28/11]

Friends:

For the benefit of a group of interested folk meeting with me monthly and working through my Grammar book chapter by chapter, I have undertaken the task of writing notes on the various chapters. As we are preparing to meet soon, I have just posted the Notes on Ch. 6: Human Being as Created and Sinful on this web site, along with notes on the previous chapters.

I conclude that chapter with a section entitled "The Consequences of Sin and Jesus Christ" and I am posting here the notes on that section. I hope it is interesting to you and illuminating of my basic convictions that Jesus Christ does transform the consequences of our sin.

The Consequences of Sin and Jesus Christ  [362-64]

1. Sin corrupts human nature—the human essence—but does not destroy that nature, even though sin diminishes and thwarts the great potencies with which God endowed human beings.

a) sin corrupts, distorts, and fractures the being-in-act of human beings, whereby humans enact lives that are alienated from their own creaturely, personal and spiritual essence and nature.

b) sin corrupts the human heart and…


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More on Narratives: Responding to Janzen and Poe [2/25/11]

*The following was accidentally deleted and is a repost. Thank you for your understanding.

Friends:

J. Gerald Janzen, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Christian Theological Seminary and David Poe, UCC pastor in New Haven, MO posted interesting comments on my previous blog of 2/22/11 on Narratives. Here I am responding to their arresting remarks—that can be found as comments on that blog and available on this site.

Gerry: your response reminds me vividly just why you have been such a stirring and insightful conversation-partner over these past 23 years—how did I ever get along without you in the preceding years?

On your first point, referencing James Kugel, I think my use of ‘self’ and narrative does not depend on that thick sense of ‘self’ that is explored by Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity [1989]. Rather I have in mind the ways in which the OT narratives variously remind the reader that the individuals identified in its texts are distinctly members of Israel’s tribes or persons not of the tribes. Being Hebrew or later being Jewish is always an identity marker with theological significance.

…


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